Refinishing doors is time consuming labor. Typically this work involves activities such as sanding, painting, varnishing and drying the door. Placing the door in a vertical position during this work is problematic. Sprayed paint may reach surrounding objects and debris from the floor may foul the wet paint on the door. Wet paint may run down a vertical door creating unsightly tracks. It is more difficult for a painter to work on a vertical door than on a horizontal door.
Ideally doors should be held in a horizontal position while they are being refinished. In addition, both side of the door should be easily exposed to be worked on, and when painted, the wet paint should not be marred by the holding mechanism.
A problem that emerges when multiple doors are painted is that a large surface area is needed to store the doors while they are drying. Therefore, there is a need to store the drying doors in a stack.
Another problem of significance is that freshly painted doors should be allowed to dry in a location removed from the one where doors are sanded and painted to avoid unwanted dust and paint settling on them and marring their surface.
Yet another problem facing the painter is that often he must work on doors of different sizes as when he is working on several assorted cabinets. In addition, doors may have different thicknesses and may have to be handled differently and separately.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,090,204 by Speed et al., does not allow doors of different sizes to be stacked together. In addition, the patent makes use of brackets which may adversely shield some of the door surface from spray paint. Furthermore these brackets cannot be used on thin doors as typically found in cabinets. Insertion of screws on the sides might split the wood.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,561,470 by Gottfredson et al., does not allow doors to be stacked. In addition, anchors inserted on the side of thin doors, strong enough to support the doors during prepping, might split the wood.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,491,308 by Walton et al., does not allow doors of different sizes to be stacked together. In addition the insertion of supporting anchors on the side of thin doors, strong enough to support the doors during prepping might split the wood.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,239,197 by Olstad, U.S. Pat. No. 3,625,504 by Walker and U.S. Pat. No. 2,955,632 by Stone do not allow doors to be stacked. In addition, the insertion of supporting anchors on the side of the doors, strong enough for support during prepping can split the wood if the door is thin.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,509,544 by Osborne does not allow doors of different sizes to be stacked, and cannot be used on thin doors because the supporting anchors might split the wood. In addition this rack system relies on anchors screwed into the edges of doors. These anchors are not strong enough to support doors during heavy duty work such as sanding.
A non-patented device on the market is being sold by the Swiss company Wiederkehr based in Switzerland at Leisibach Strasse, Buchrain 6033 (telephone: 041-445-05-44.) This device is shown in FIG. 1 and FIG. 2. It consists of two racks 101 facing each other. Each rack 101 is traversed at an angle from the horizontal by cylindrical bars 102. These bars can be used to support a stack of doors 106 while the doors are drying. The bars 102 are crimped or flattened on their ends to prevent them from slipping out of the racks. This rack system is not adequate for prepping a door because it supports the door by the edges and not by the surface: the force exerted on a door during prepping may cause the door to slip and fall to the ground. In addition, the bars traverse the vertical members of the rack 101 at an angle from the horizontal, and therefore they cannot be adjusted to support doors of different sizes by sliding them in or out. As shown in FIG. 1 only doors of a single size can be treated simultaneously. The inability of this prior art device to support doors of different sizes is detrimental when cabinets are being refinished because cabinets are usually constructed with non-uniform door sizes even in the same house. For example cabinets in the kitchen may be different depending if they are over or under a counter. Cabinets in the kitchen may differ from those in the bathroom.
None of the prior art offers the functionality, flexibility of use, simplicity and economy of this invention. Further features, aspects, and advantages of the present invention over the prior art will be more fully understood when considered with respect to the following detailed description claims and accompanying drawings.